How do you feel when you see on the news pictures of wildfires, hurricanes or floods? More often than not, the most extreme conditions happen in far off lands and whist we might sympathize with people, this is happening in a different country, even different continents and we might well disregard events like this as being none of our concern. Looking at the picture above, I feel conscious that this is somebody’s home, people’s possessions, livelihoods destroyed forever. It is far too easy for us to be detached when we are miles away, but the moment torrential rain brings flooding to Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Cumbria, Yorkshire and London, we suddenly become interested.
There was a time when severe coditions like this would be referred to as “acts of God” indeed if we look back to old testaments times, such events would sometimes be seen as God taking his wrath out on people, but as the years have passed and people have learned more about the world we live in, we are starting to recognise that our abuse of the earth and its resources over recent centuries has a lasting impact on the world and rather than blaming God for the extreme heat, resulting in wild fires, draughts and famine, the extreme wind and rain causing mass destruction is our responsibility.
I remember as a young man, feeling helpless as I watched the 1979 report by John Pilger on the extreme drought in Cambodia, and that is often our response to the major stories like this, they appear to be simply too big for us to be able to comprehend and we ask ourselves the question “what can I do?” When it comes to the Climate Crisis, the root cause of our more extreme conditions, there is something we can do, the worlds leaders from the United Nations meet at the beginning of November this year in Glasgow to make plans for the world’s response to the Climate Crisis.
As Christians, we believe that the world is God’s, he created a perfect world, all the wonders of the natural world. Since time began, humankind has assumed that everything in the world is there for our consumption and we have assumed dominion over the world and all its creatures. Such dominion carries responsibility and our younger generations are starting to recognise that we simply can not continue to use and abuse the worlds resources without continually having to pay the price.
The Ipswich Methodist Circuit of twenty two Churches in South East Suffolk adopted a Climate Crisis response, covering the nine weeks up to the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November. Knowledge is power and over the nine weeks we will target our thinking on nine different topics, so that we can inform one another.
Knowledge is nothing without action, change can be achieved if a lot of people, do a little.
Join us in this task to change the world.